San Luis Valley Conservation Area, Conservation area in San Luis Valley, Colorado.

The San Luis Valley Conservation Area is a National Conservation Area in south-central Colorado and far northern New Mexico, established in September 2018 and administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It covers the San Luis Valley and the upper Rio Grande basin, where runoff from the San Juan Mountains and Sangre de Cristo Range creates wetlands and riparian areas in high-mountain desert. It is the fifth unit of the San Luis Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex.

The San Luis Valley Conservation Area was established in September 2018 as a landscape-scale National Conservation Area, becoming the fifth unit of the San Luis Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex. It was promoted and strongly supported by Ken Salazar, a Hispanic San Luis Valley native and former U.S. Secretary of the Interior with a ranching background in Conejos County. Public meetings on the draft proposal were held in May 2012 in Alamosa, San Luis, and Moffat, Colorado.

The area is named for the San Luis Valley, where the Rio Grande begins its roughly 1,900-mile run to the Gulf of Mexico. Ken Salazar, a San Luis Valley native from a Conejos County ranching family and Interior Secretary under Obama, promoted the proposal. Grazing continues on easement land, and landowners keep control of public access.

Most of the area is private land held under conservation easements, and each landowner keeps control of public access, so check access before visiting. The Alamosa, Baca and Monte Vista refuges are the managed units within the complex. Roads and trails cross high desert terrain, and mountain snowpack runoff feeds the wetlands.

The Rio Grande springs forth here in a high-elevation ecosystem and shapes vital wetlands that attract millions of migratory birds before they continue their long journeys. These wetlands are so valuable that they bring people with opposing interests together toward a shared goal.